


The Velvet Sun (That Shines on Me and You)

by luninosity



Category: Penelope (2006), Shame (2011)
Genre: Beginnings, First Meetings, Flirting, M/M, Music, meeting at a wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2385509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brandon and Johnny, first meetings, new beginnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Velvet Sun (That Shines on Me and You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kageillusionz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageillusionz/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [kageillusionz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageillusionz/pseuds/kageillusionz) in the [mcfassy_autumn_extravaganza_2014](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/mcfassy_autumn_extravaganza_2014) collection. 



> Title from The Killers’ “On Top.” It seemed to fit. :-)

The wedding glimmered. Glinted multicolored light and fantasy artwork like a fairytale. Streamers of color and gossamer fabric caught in the breeze under old oak trees. Brandon, leaning on the bar, curled fingers around sleek happy glass and smiled. The world felt luminous around him. Poised, he thought. As if something were just waiting to happen. Fairies momentarily having popped out of sight around the corner.  
  
Piano music spilled across the scene, jewel-bright and slightly old-fashioned and inviting. He listened for a while, trying to identify the tune; he couldn’t, and was by equal turns annoyed and entertained and challenged by this fact.   
  
Dancers swung across the floor, Brandon’s sister someplace among them; not her wedding, here as a friend of one of the brides, here with him dragged along as her plus-one. He did like seeing Sissy happy. He’d said yes.  
  
The dark little monster at the pit of his stomach stirred, raised a head, grumbled sleepily. Weddings were such excellent places for casual hook-ups, for tipsiness, for indulging that addiction to skin on skin and sweat and climax and shuddering vertiginous orgasm.   
  
He had a meeting on Tuesday. He’d go, and he’d be honest about the addiction, and he’d ache with need.   
  
The dancers spun around in twirling happy-ending dresses and suits. Brandon, watching, knew that they were happy, knew that he himself was not unhappy, and to his surprise found his heart wanting to smile. A lonely hollowed-out kind of smile, maybe. But not unreal.  
  
He wandered over toward the piano, driven by damnable curiosity.  
  
The boy playing didn’t glance up, not at Brandon or the half-full tumbler of Irish whiskey balanced atop the instrument. He did smile, though, and the melody flickered into deeper beckoning playfulness for an instant, a flirtatious improvised interlude.  
  
“All right,” Brandon said, giving up, “I give up. I’ve been trying for five minutes to name the tune.”  
  
The boy did glance over, grinning, at that. Dark hair in his eyes and freckles on his nose. Blue eyes like the center of the universe, and fingers still playing like a fallen angel might play.   
  
Brandon found himself spellbound by the eyes. Extraordinary, not only the color and the sparkle but the depth. The boy wasn’t _that_ much of a boy, and those eyes knew about tattered nights and bruised dawns.   
  
“That’s because you don’t know it,” the piano-player told him, and threw a rippling river of notes in, apparently just because he could. “I wrote it last week.”  
  
“You did.” He was aroused, had been aroused, since that first glance up; the nearness, the complicated warmth, the bend and flex of fingers he could imagine on his skin. But it wasn’t only that. Something else, something nameless, tugging at his heart for attention. “You write music.”  
  
“I wrote this because Pen asked me to.” With a tip of that head toward the dance floor, where both brides were now dancing together, laughing, whispering close. “Favor for a friend.”  
  
“Impressive favor.”  
  
“Impressive girl. Her and Annie.” The music slowed, flipped around on itself, became a waltz. Penelope and Annie looked over, waved, started slow-dancing and tripping over each other, utterly failing at ballroom style. Pen was wearing Annie’s jacket over her ballgown; Annie was wearing Pen’s famously fashionable colorful scarf.  
  
Because it was a bizarre night anyway, because he felt like he should know this boy from somewhere, because he was turned on and oddly not wanting to be turned on, wanting to wait and draw out this dream and puncture it all at once, Brandon said, “You and her.” It wasn’t a question.  
  
The blue eyes looked surprised, but not annoyed. “Once, yeah. Never went anywhere. Pen’s a heroine, isn’t she, and she got her princess. I wasn’t what she needed. Knew it then.”  
  
And Brandon, who’d said the words meaning to hurt, who’d said them out of confusion, found himself wanting to apologize, in the face of that simple honesty. He offered, equally honest, “You’re the one playing at her wedding.”  
  
“Not much for running away from stuff. Tried that. Lonely.” One hand picked up the drink, tossed most of it back. “And now you’re here talking to me.”  
  
“You’re interesting.”  
  
“And here I thought you didn’t know who I was.”  
  
“I know I _should,_ and I’m kind of hating that. Famous?”  
  
“Not _yet_.” The boy shook hair out of his eyes again. Brandon’s fingers twitched with the need to do it for him. “Johnny Martin. Your turn.”  
  
“Oh fuck me,” Brandon said, because he knew the name, people were starting to know the name. Not world-famous yet, no. Local jazz clubs. Word of mouth. Very good words. He’d been meaning to drop by on a night when Martin might be playing.  
  
The nighttime fairies popped back up out of nowhere at all and twinkled wickedly in those eyes. “Might, if you ask nicely. Not if I don’t know your name.”  
  
And, standing there, drink forgotten in his hand, Brandon realized that the nameless sensation in his chest had a name. He _wanted_ the boy to know his.   
  
He gave it. Johnny smiled. “I like it.”  
  
The evening shimmered and sung, strings plucked and quivering, around them. Anticipation like the moment between fingertips and harp-notes.   
  
“I like sex,” Brandon said, a last-ditch effort to head this off, an escape-route if those beautiful weary eyes would take it, a way to keep them both safe from the unknown perils ahead. “I mean I really like sex. I go to meetings about it.”  
  
Johnny considered this for a second or two—startlement and some less knowable emotion flickering behind the tidepools—and then put both eyebrows up and said, “If that’s your best pick-up line, you’re lucky I think you’re gorgeous,” and played Sinatra drunk on moonlight at him, fey and feral and magic-tinged.  
  
“You…”  
  
“I told you I don’t run away, these days,” Johnny said, looking up at him, “and I quit gambling and smoking, too, and most mornings I even wake up without hating myself. And you’re trying to warn me, and you don’t even know me, so I’m thinking you’re one of the good guys. White hats and heroes. Lucky me.”  
  
Brandon thought about possible answers for a while, and then set his drink on the piano next to Johnny’s and said, “Maybe you deserve a good guy.”  
  
The Sinatra skipped a beat, and Johnny blinked, and then recovered balance and rhythm, and batted back, “Getting better with the lines.”  
  
“Lucky,” Brandon said, “you said, so you could be getting lucky, later tonight,” and Johnny started laughing out loud, while the piano murmured appreciation and desire, while the secret dark monster in Brandon’s gut found some sunlight in its cave, echoing down, maybe, from the vicinity of his heart.  
  
“After the reception,” Johnny mused, still half-laughing, smiling like starlight, like the first unafraid shared step into that great unknown, “after I’m done here, let’s see how good we are.”


End file.
